USDA and OIP

FCW refers to the 6-month review of the digital government strategy.  Via links, I come on this page from USDA.  From what I see, it appears USDA is bragging on the Office Information Profile system.

I'm amazed, really amazed. OIP was a result of work in the 1990's, Paul Whitmore from FSA and someone from NRCS and RD, which had actually evolved from Gerry Deibert's efforts to construct a database of USDA offices back in the day when Sec. Madigan was trying to consolidate field offices.

Unfortunately, it got done as a separate silo from SCIMS, which was unfortunate, or at least I thought so then.  Anyhow over the years I've occasionally looked at the OIP page(s) just to see what's happened.  I could swear, though I might be wrong, that NRCS had dropped the links to it, though it seems to be back now.  It's not evident on the USDA web page.

It looks to me as if maybe they blew the dust off the old software, added in the link to the Bing map  (which is good) and resurrected it.  I wonder what sort of usage statistics USDA maintains on it.  Pardon my doubts, but I think the design too closely reflects the bureaucracies involved, rather than meeting the needs of the user.  If I'm looking for an FSA/NRCS/RD office:

• I might be looking for the closest one to my current location, or a specific location.  In that case, I'd be best off if office locations were integrated with Google maps (and Bing, etc.). In other words, if I stick Reston, VA in Google maps, and add the ": FSA office", it should flag the closest office.  Or if I add ":gov", it should show the closest government offices.  Seems to me this would be good for OMB or whoever to work on.  I tried this sort of search a few times and the results vary.  The closest FSA office to Reston is at 14th and Independence, but it didn't show the county offices.  RD and NRCS didn't get that result.
• if I want to know which office services a specific geographic area, the OIP does okay, except for the fact you need to drill down through state, to county, to agency.  If you ask Google: "what FSA office serves Mills County, IA?, I get the state office, not the county office.

bin Laden Alive: Would It Be Better?

Read a thoughtful op-ed by David Ignatius in the Post today, keyed to the new movie " Zero Dark Thirty" and the argument over whether torture works. He argues that it may have in the case of bin Laden, but we need to accept the idea that torture can work, can have benefits.  So in weighing whether to torture we weigh the moral costs versus the possible benefits.

The op-ed caused me to muse about another possibility: suppose we had never gotten the info on bin Laden so we never killed him.  Is it possible that would have been better for us?  Certainly his death satisfies the visceral need for revenge we feel, but are we better off?

As I understand it, bin Laden was having great difficulty communicating with his organization and in getting people to do what he wanted.  I'd assume as time passed that difficulty would increase, bin Laden would be more isolated, more out of touch, less effective.  But we killed him. So now what's left of the organization are perhaps free to form organizations more local in scope, with perhaps more effective leaders.  So in weighing costs and benefits, maybe we traded one big organization with an aging, out-of-touch leader for several smaller organizations with younger and possibly more effective leaders? 

Right to Work and Farm Programs

Brad Plumer at Wonkblog has a post on right to work laws which gets into their history.

If I remember my sociology professor in college had a take on the union shop and farm programs.  The idea was that viewed broadly, the government delegated some of its sovereign powers to collective entities or defined groups, whether it was workers or tobacco farmers.  If, after a campaign and a vote, a referendum, the majority of the people in the group voted "yes", the government gave the majority the right to impose rules on the minority. 

Today we see this as an answer to the "free rider" problem, though I don't believe that terminology was in vogue in 1962. 

Examples of this process would be labor unions, agricultural marketing agreements (for fruits and vegetables), agricultural promotion assessments, the old marketing quota problems for wheat, tobacco, peanuts, cotton, etc.

Sociophysicist

That's a new specialty on me, but Technology Review explains here.  (People using statistics on social patterns.)

Maybe related to this ( linguisticphysicist)  (applying statistics to language patterns).

[Updated with second paragraph]

Keep It Boring

Words of wisdom from Joel Achenbach on the fiscal cliff:

That’s the blueprint for a deal: Do stuff that people can’t understand or don’t really notice. Keep it boring!

The Decline of Cursive

Saw an article on the decline of cursive writing, the sort my aunt, who was also my 2nd grade teacher, tried to teach me. Apparently since people are typing, not writing handwritten letters, we've all forgotten how to do cursive.

That's confirmed today by my personal Christmas card from the Obamas.  Barack and Michelle sign in cursive; Malia and Sasha print their names.

Just another example of change, if not of declining standards

Post Versus Times

Both newspapers had articles today on the same subjects; in both cases the Post article seemed a tad better:

Both reported the shooting death of a woman's rights advocate in an Afghanistan province. Both described previous deaths and both suggested Taliban involvement.  The Post, however, also described another possibility: the woman's male relatives might have been responsible.  No way to know for sure.

Both reported the results of an international test of 4th graders on reading and math.  US students were in the middle, below the usual suspects. Both reported that Florida was a state which volunteered to be tested as if it were a country, and its results were better than the U.S. as a whole.  The Post, however, interviewed a critic of Florida, who suggested that a policy of holding back 3rd graders who were below standards on reading had reduced the 4th grade population being tested (by a random sample) and improved the average ability.   Again, no way to know, but having the fuller picture was valuable.

Richer Is Worser

From today's Farm Policy,an article discussing Rep. Noem of SD

The Register article explained that, “Noem, now 41, said people today planning to pass a farm operation on to a family member are in ‘a much worse position than we were back then’ because of the increase in land values.
“When Noem’s dad died in 1994, an acre of land in Hamlin County in the eastern part of the state sold for $650 to $800 an acre.
“Today, some of the same land is fetching $7,000 an acre.”

Comment on Comments

Until recently there haven't been many comments on this blog. Every few days I check for comments and usually respond.  But in the last few days it looks as if the amount of spam comments has been growing. If it continues maybe I'll have to adopt a spam filter. 

A Study in the "Iron Triangle"

Shortly after being reelected, Rep. Emerson of Missouri is resigning to work for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association .

I remember, sometimes I think that's all I do is remember, when President Reagan wanted to get rid of the Rural Electrification Administration.  Didn't happen, and this helps to explain why:

NRECA represents more than 900 rural cooperative utilities in 47 states that have a combined national membership of more than 42 million customers. When the group and its members come to Capitol Hill, they’re people who know the lawmaker’s district.
That base supplies a veritable army of 2,500 to 3,000 co-op members that NRECA brings to Capitol Hill every year, outgoing NRECA CEO and former Oklahoma Rep. Glenn English said in an interview.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/jo-ann-emerson-nreca-84813.html#ixzz2EgMQpQXo